Misconduct Allegations Arise in FBI Lab Probe

by RICHARD A. SERRANO, Los Angeles Times

Inquiry: Workers tell of pressure
to lie about their scientific findings.

High-profile cases could suffer.

Thursday, January 30, 1997

WASHINGTON--Justice Department investigators
reviewing reported sloppiness at the FBI's
vaunted crime laboratory here have turned up
allegations of broader troubles: Lab officials
say they were pressured by agents to lie about
their scientific findings and that their
conclusions were sometimes changed by supervisors
to support criminal prosecutions.

The allegations emerged in dozens of
interviews that the lab workers have given to
officials of the Justice Department's Office of
the Inspector General, which is completing an
examination of a wide range of problems at the
FBI headquarters lab.

Government summaries of many of the
interviews show that a number of high-profile
criminal cases, such as the Oklahoma City bombing
and the Unabomber investigation, may suffer if
federal courts later rule that key pieces of
evidence have been put in jeopardy by poor lab
work.

But other material provided to the inspector
general's investigators, obtained by The Times
this week, reveals that several former and
current lab officials also allege conduct by FBI
investigating agents and supervisors that raises
fundamental questions about the integrity of some
FBI employees.

The inspector general's report is not
complete, however, and it is not known whether
additional investigation will support these
broader allegations. The documents nonetheless
make it clear that top FBI officials realize that
they have major problems at the laboratory.

This week, senior FBI officials announced
that they will conduct their own review of the
lab. In launching that examination, they also
disclosed that three senior lab employees were
being transferred, including the heads of the
chemistry and explosives units. Two of the three
are among the supervisors accused of changing the
conclusions of lab workers.

The bureau also announced that it plans to
improve its training procedures, to build a new
lab facility at its Quantico, Va., training
academy and to seek outside accreditation with
the Laboratory Accreditation Board of the
American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.
Senior FBI officials have refused to comment
on the allegations, indicating that they will
address the concerns when the inspector general's
report is released.

The FBI, created in 1908, has long regarded
its crime lab as the best in the world. Its
techniques are followed by forensic experts
around the globe and by police forces across the
United States. Stymied state and local
investigators regularly send evidence to the lab
for analysis.

Although problems at the facility are a blow
to the FBI's image and operations, some
Washington law enforcement sources said Tuesday
that they do not expect major criminal cases to
be scuttled by the problems. But any findings
that undermine the quality of the lab's methods
and conclusions undoubtedly would present defense
attorneys in state and federal cases with new
avenues to challenge evidence analyzed by the
lab.

The lead whistle-blower in the matter is
Frederic Whitehurst, a senior chemist who was
suspended by the bureau this week--reportedly for
speaking out publicly in general terms about
shortcomings at the lab.

According to the summaries, Whitehurst told
the inspector general about a "pattern" in
high-profile cases in which unqualified lab
personnel testified in court in areas of
expertise that they did not have. "Incorrect
results were going to the jury," he said.
He said there were times when the bureau
pressured him to prove guilt in some cases rather
than just test evidence. Asked if he and others
were encouraged to commit perjury, he said: "We
all do it."

He also said that there were times when his
dictation on lab reports was changed by other
examiners without his knowledge, often to switch
findings described as "consistent with" certain
evidence of a crime to the more positive category
"identified as."

Among those who changed his findings, he
said, were David Williams, a supervisory agent in
the explosives unit, and James T. Thurman, chief
of the explosives unit. They are two of three
officials transferred this week by the bureau.
Steven Burmeister, a chief analyst in the
lab's chemistry and toxicology units, told
investigators that the lab "knowingly" has sent
out false reports. He added that the lab's
explosives unit has been "stretching the truth
for years" and that there often was no supporting
data for many of their findings.

Both Burmeister and Whitehurst alleged that
some supervisors, including Williams, often
"rearranged" the language in some reports.
Rick Hahn, another lab analyst, said that if
told what to say in his testimony, he parrots the
testimony of other experts.

Whitehurst also alleged that the third
official who was transferred, Roger Martz, chief
of the chemistry unit, mishandled evidence in the
Oklahoma City bombing investigation by testing
debris before first following protocols for
conducting microscopic examinations that are
intended to keep evidence from being
contaminated.

He said Martz did not even have a microscope
in his office and that the official had placed
some of the critical material in contaminated
water.

The documents showed that other lab
employees made allegations similar to those of
Whitehurst, Burmeister and Hahn, although the
other employees were not identified.

Whitehurst is expected to be an important
defense witness for Timothy J. McVeigh, who goes
on trial March 31 in the April 19, 1995, bombing
of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Defense
attorney Stephen Jones has sharply challenged the
way evidence was collected, handled and examined
by the lab.

Whitehurst, Jones said Wednesday, "certainly
may be an important figure in this trial."
Federal prosecutors in the Oklahoma City
case have chosen not to discuss the inspector
general's report publicly or what impact, if any,
it might have on the trials of McVeigh and
co-defendant Terry L. Nichols. However, they are
expected to oppose Whitehurst taking the stand as
an expert witness for the defense.

In the summaries, lab personnel have told
the inspector general that McVeigh's clothing was
contaminated, and also that important bomb
residue discovered at Nichols' home was
mishandled. Some of the evidence against Nichols
later had to be discarded, the documents said.

In another example of evidence contamination
at the lab, Whitehurst alleged that Burmeister
stored evidence together in one room that had
been taken separately from the Oklahoma City
bombing and the Unabomber case--raising the
possibility that the evidence from both cases was
cross-contaminated.

Copyright Los Angeles Times

Suggestion: send a copy of this article to Henry Hyde, Chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, and again demand he look into the
activities of the FBI and the Department of Justice in the Eastern
District of Kentucky, in particular the high-profile case of the U.S.
vs Charles Hayes.